UPDATE: King George reminded us that "...last week, working with, uh, people in Great Britain, we disrupted a plot. People tryin' to come and kill...uh...kill people. This country of [mine] is at war. Uh, and we must give the people who're, uh, whose responsibility it is to protect this country [i.e. Great Britain, which is "over there"] the tools necessary to protect this country in a time of war [i.e. wiretapping implemented with warrants issued by the UK Home Office]."

Okay. I get it. We need to ensure that the UK, which "foiled" the "plot" of terrorists who had no operational plan, no passports and no working prototype for a hand-cream and rootbeer bomb, issues warrants to wiretap its own residents and citizens. Fortunately, the UK saw fit to do this. But Judge Taylor's decision makes it difficult for us to spy on people in other countries--no, wait, we could do that with impunity, via Eschelon. I mean, to spy on our own residents and citizens without the warrants required by FISA and the Fourth Amendment, which we could obtain anyway from the rubber-stamp FISA court within 72 hours or, in the case of war, a lot more time than that. Right.

So, can you just retire to your faux ranch and let the Brits "protect" us from the plots they engineer so they can publicly "foil" them?

Kinda makes the olden days of "Persian Gulf," "Stay the course," "little shaver," "Don't wanna be a one-termer" seem like the golden-hued salad days, don't it?